The Financial Times is reporting on a survey of 13,000 internet users in 14 countries. The survey was done by the Boston Consulting Group in March and was one of the first studies that have been done since the iPad has hit the market.
“The survey suggests that e-readers and tablets are not a niche product for early adopters but could become the MP3 [digital music] players of this decade. Grandmothers will soon be carrying them around,” Mr Rose said.
However, mass adoption would depend on the price of single-function devices such as the Kindle or Sony Reader falling to $100-$150 and the price of multipurpose devices such as the iPad coming down from $499 to $130-$200, the survey found. Two-thirds of respondents favoured devices that were capable of performing more than one thing. …
US consumers would pay just $5-$10 for an e-book, $2-$4 for a magazine and $5-$10 for a monthly newspaper subscription, the survey concluded.
This is why Palm Pilots, smartphones, and other devices that were originally bought to serve some other purpose, garnered the most ebook readers. If you already have the device, there is zero marginal cost to read ebooks on it.
This points to iPad hurting Kindle sales. The Kindle was the first dedicated ebook-reader to achieve mass market sales. But if I get an iPad to be a netbook replacement, or portable video viewer, or game-player, why not install the free Amazon Kindle app and get some books that way?
Especially if the iPad (and we can hope for future slates based on Android joining in) also supports Barnes and Noble books, and Borders books, and Google Books.
— asotir